Yes, the Lebanese…This group of men ran an illegal LEVIS cartel. What? Yes, Levi Cartel. We had three apartments, each one having a couple of older Lebanese gentlemen (“chaperones”). All which by the way were either named Sam or Al. Along with the chaperones was anywhere from three to six young teenagers living in each apartment also. It was a sort of interracial halfway Brady bunch house. All the kids were around my age, fourteen, fifteen drop outs, junkies although there were a couple of normal ones (well who seemed to be normal compared to the lot of them).

In exchange for the roof over our heads we would all pile up into three or four, filthy, minivans and travel from state to state, store to store and buy as many pairs of Levi 501 jeans on sale as possible. This was so that by the end of the month after we had filled up an entire bedroom to the ceiling wall to wall, we would shove them all into as many U haul trucks as needed, drive it down to San Diego, throw it on a ship so that they could send them to Lebanon to get a disgusting return on their money.

The retail stores and the Feds started getting savvy to our little operation. So most stores in the greater north-west, because of yours truly, implemented a maximum amount of jeans that could be sold to one person and that number was three. Before this we were getting paid one dollar per pair of jeans we bought (with their money) and each of us was pulling in hundreds of pairs per day, so this new rule tossed a monkey wrench in our income. Now we had to change our tactics drastically. Now instead of six people in each van we had to fit suitcases of clothes, hats and even fake mustaches in with us. We would all run into a store get our three pair maximum, run outside change clothes and do this as many times as we could before the store was either out or security escorted us off their premises.

Now these stores being as smart as they are changed their policy again and added not only a cap on the amount but now anyone that wanted to buy a pair of jeans needed to have a I.D.. This did not have the effect they were expecting, because after we all got our plethora of fake I.D’s we pretty much drained the Levi 501 market…Washington, Idaho and Montana were the next in line for our 501 supremacy, but you get the picture.

I don’t really remember how long I was with them, but it was a while. Enough time to learn enough Arabic to get me by. I also learned that if you are in the back of a mini van going 80 mph and the driver wont stop to let people use the bathroom, you get pretty good at going out the window. Always felt bad for the people driving behind us.

Eventually the IRS was able to catch up to us and deported our chaperones back to their own soil, forcefully I might add.

Like this:

Ok, so Time Magazine put out their The 2011 TIME 100 most influential people in the world. Now time to dig in, I will not be going over all of them, because, well I just don’t have that type of commitment to this list.

We have…

Reed Hastings; the founder of Netflix, you know the guy that changed the way we rent movies forever, or at least until the next guy comes up with something else.

Amy Poehler; So besides a handful of very funny movies like Baby Mama, and being on Saturday Night Live, I have no clue how “Influential” she can be.

Mark Zuckerberg; Obviously no link needed. I actually agree with this one, he changed the way we communicate more than any other social media site could have ever dreamed. Although he may be a bit of a narcissist, he is a communication genius.

Peter Vesterbacka; I am irritated just typing this. This is the creator of “Angry Birds“.

Amy Chua; WHO?

Joe Biden; Ok I get it, he is the vice president, but really that’s like nominating the prom kings brother for just being related, but whatever.

Kim Clijsters; A tennis player, really?

Cory Booker; How can a Mayor of Newark be among the top 100 IN THE WORLD? He is not even a Senator!

Rob Bell; I can’t wait until I finish ONE book so that I can be on this list next year.

Michele Bachmann; This may take a minute…Ok so this whack job has said things like: “I find it interesting that it was back in the 1970s that the swine flu broke out under another, then under another Democrat president, Jimmy Carter. I’m not blaming this on President Obama, I just think it’s an interesting coincidence.” and jewels as “Carbon dioxide is portrayed as harmful. But there isn’t even one study that can be produced that shows that carbon dioxide is a harmful gas.” Top 100 Idiots of all time maybe.

Justin Bieber; No link deserved. Are you F’n kidding me?

Now this list goes on an on with people like, Sting and Mark Walberg. I am not saying that the entire list is lame, there is alot of very important people on this list like, Wael Ghonim, Ai Weiwei, Larry Page and Derrick Rossi.

This biased and amazingly incompetently list should be as embarrassing to you as Rolling Stone is at putting Snookie on its cover. This list should be pulled from your archive and every copy should be destroyed. There are a lot of people on this post-it-note list that seem like seat fillers. It seems that you got to around number fifty couldn’t think of anyone else, ran to the store got the enquirer and went crazy. I have always liked your pieces, but this list is an atrocity. If you need to throw actors on the list why not Micheal J Fox and Clint Eastwood. Also how is Justin Bieber more influential than the Pope or say even Yogi Bear (they all love children, ok low blow). I was honestly surprised that you didn’t put Glen Beck on that list.

Me being the poop sensitive man, that I am, I had a very hard time potty training my daughter. I at one point wanted to take her to the doctor because I was afraid that she pooped way too many times during the day, I thought that it was abnormal. When she was an infant it was always scary opening the putrid smelling wrap that kept the demon of the bowels contained. I was more times than not utterly surprised that a butt, more than half way down the body could magically shoot poop up to my daughters hairline. I think they called this explosive diarrhea . A box of crayola could not compare with the variety of greens that I have seen in these wicked times. Bathing was never a fun voyage with a tiny human that did not have the capacity to “hold It’. I don’t know that anyone that does not have a child, has seen diarrhea in a roman tub, but it is something that you can live without.

I do not think that I have ever had a normal diaper changing episode, It was always either my hand somehow finding its way dab smack into the middle of the diaper or her hands somehow getting a mud mask when i went to get some new wipes. There was one time that was ok, and it was only OK because about ten seconds before hand when I was taking off her onesie and fate decided that it was time for the residual from her em-biblical cord to get stuck in the fabric and ripped out. So the overwhelming shock of thought that I just accidentally yanked off my daughter’s life line, I wasn’t paying too much attention to the poopy diaper.

It goes on after just getting your child to poop in the toilet, at this point you have to show them how to wipe. It puts it in a whole different perspective when you see theses giblets floating in a toilet and not a diaper. It makes it more human I guess you can say. The calling out from the bathroom, ” Daddy, I went kaka can you come wipe me” always put a chill down my spine, just to hear poetry like “see daddy, I went big kaka like Mommy” (information that I neither need or wanted to ever know), not letting me off the hook until I inspect the lot of it. Throughout the entire evolution of my daughter, potty training was the part that I could have done without. Again having the gag reflex of an inebriated man who decided to take one more last shot of tequila, I have also been in the vicinity of my amazingly gorgeous daughter as she farts louder than I ever could, without ever even batting an eye, ( I may need to get her ears checked because she doesn’t seem to hear them) like an old woman.

Everyone knows the popular saying, “The cart before the horse”. As it turns out I have lived most of my existence with this exact ideal.

Such as this blog, one of my most infamous acts of outrunning my horse; I am in the process of writing a book and a friend of mine turned me on to blogging. “It will be a great tool to help you in writing techniques”, he told me. What I am sure that he did not realize how ambitious I am with new ideas. So as it goes by the end of the night I had my first blog site started with Word Press. I loved it so much that by the end of the week I had three blog pages, after two weeks I had four blogs, one video blog site, bought my first domain name and started building a ten page web site. All before even putting finger to keyboard on the writing front.

On my next big adventure I whizzed past as my Clydesdale still lay sleeping on the sidelines; I love the sound of a guitar, so much so that I decided to take up learning how to play one. I bought a mid level Yamaha that sounded great with the intention to teach myself to become the next Eric Clapton. One just wasn’t enough so I bought another and another and, yes, another. I have four guitars, one of them being a visual and acoustic masterpiece. I now own more guitars that most seasoned guitar players. Don’t forget the accessories; the amps, picks, books, metronome, and the pointless thumb pick. This all sounds great, you might say. Problem is that I know only about ten chords and can play songs that only my three-year old loves to hear. On a positive note I started playing daily and I have my first appointment for lessons with a guitar vet this week.

Maybe it is not that my cart is too fast, I may just need to check my horse for a pulse; Next comes Pod-casting. A great friend of mine and I decided that it would be a great idea to start a podcast. So of course the next day we had our first mic, our headphones, and even some pod-casting software. You can check us out at We Interrupt This Broadcast. We are now on our 23 episode and out of all the buttons that our software has, record is the only one we seem to know how to use.. Our next step on our escapade in entertainment is a cartoon pilot. We are in need of animators and of course we have already got the software.

I think I need a horse whip ’cause this pony wont budge; So now I decide that it would be fun to start mountain biking. Of course once again I now have the bike, the helmet, all the accessories and yes with much harassment from friends I bought that little mirror that clamps on to the side of your helmet. I probably will not use it from fear of ridicule. I will risk that sharp left hand turn without that little masterpiece of an invention. Funny story, my friend and I decided that we should take them out for a test ride. So off we go, us and our fresh off the showroom floor bikes. Wouldn’t you know it the first HILL we found my friend decided that we would all enjoy a stint at the hospital when this little joyride became a funniest home video. Now a broken collar-bone four broken rib and a punctured lung is all that has become of that biking expedition. Now the furthest height that my mountain bike sees is the upper balcony.

I am sure that by later in the week I will find a new niche to start, maybe bungee jumping, maybe piloting an aircraft (damn, that would be costly), or maybe even a wedding planner. All in all i have a love for trying new things. Maybe it is bass-akwards but you can say this for me, I am ambitious.

I was on my way toward my computer to do my 500 plus words a day of writing practice, when I stumbled into my closet. What a disaster it was. I finally, after I don’t know how long, decided to trash the hundreds of different articles of clothing that I have not worn in ages. I had found so many shirts that I loved that I forgot about (or maybe it is because I had stuffed them in the midst of the cotton abyss never to be seen again). Well of course I had to go throw all those in the washer immediately.

Then there is the laundry room, organized as it may be, it was time for a clean out. I do not know were my mind was at when I made the decision to keep as many extra cable, antenna, RCA, and phone lines as I could (rationing for the day that we have a global TV and phone crisis, I suppose). I have not played monopoly in years but in this dismal room I have collected two of them. I have achieved world record status in that I have the biggest ball of lint sitting just behind my dryer, ill get that some other time.

Now that I have accumulated all of my junk into five overstuffed garbage bags, I had to take them out to the car and drive them to the donation center. Seems rather ambiguous to bring the needy a bunch of cable wires, but at least they will have a jolly old time playing monopoly with only half the pieces. In retrospect I guess that I could have joined the two games into one. After a daunting two block drive to the donation drop off truck, I am finally able to get back home and to my computer. Nope..

I am inches away from pulling into my apartment complex when I see a full service car wash. I know I need gas and my, extremely economical mid-sized SUV can use a good bubble bath, so why not. So of course I pulled away from my complex, did a death defying ninety degree angle and pulled into the car wash. The young man who worked at the front desk should have been a real estate broker. With my intentions being a half tank of gas and a quick scrub down, turned out to be a full car detail, a full tank of gas, at least two sodas, and a air freshener shaped like a pineapple. All in all though they did a great job with the wash.

Finally home sitting at my computer, ready to start jotting down what I should have done six hours ago, and now I have writers block. I can write about politics I suppose, just not in the mood. I should write about the war in Afghanistan. Darn my battery is dying, I am going to have to go and get the power cord off my nightstand…… wait maybe I should write about procrastination.